I need a jack and coke

Hey everyone! Just got back from Montreal and besides getting on the wrong train on my way to the airport at 630am, a two hour ordeal in the Toronto airport where I was questioned by a good cop/naughty cop team that switched roles halfway through, (making it more of a good-then-naughty cop/naughty-then-good cop routine, I suppose) and a blood curdling hangover or two, I can safely say that the whole trip was a magnificent success.

Firstly, I heard this song in some weird boutique that serves fresh squeezed lemonade to shoppers in stained glass shotglasses, looks like a red cross in a fairy toadstool village, and sells angel wings made of garbage (among other things). The song is awesome, but interestingly, the more you know about the dude that does it, the worse it becomes. I’d like to encourage all of you to just listen to the song and imagine yourself deep in the whimsy forest of a French Canadian weirdo boutique going ‘man, whoever did this seems really cool” rather than looking up the guy and becoming insanely disappointed. I mean, I was hoping for a fat French dude or a German group of sets of twins or something like that but the actuality is literally one degree of separation from Ultraviolet Hippopotamus (who you can read all about here) and that kind of ruins everything for me. But seriously, try. Try not to think about that and listen to this song, because truly, truly it is AWESOME.

The rest of my trip was fairly uneventful. I bought some clothes and played some amazing shows, watched some great bands, drank a little beer and generally hung out with my friends and my wife AND because my kids weren’t there I slept in past 630am two days in a row. It was great. Oh, and I didn’t have my phone. I didn’t want to use it in Canada because of the insane expense. It was nice. I have an iPhone and I have found myself increasingly addicted to it. It’s extremely hard not to look at, fuck with, check things out on etc. It was a real nice change of pace because recently I came to a startling conclusion, which is essentially that the iPhone and the one ring to rule them all are pretty much the same. Here’s what I mean:

Firstly, let’s be clear for those of you who aren’t complete nerds. The one ring to rule them all is the central item that starts all the trouble in the Lord Of The Rings trilogy and the Hobbit. It’s hailed as this magnificent piece of technology that will supposedly enable the bearer of the ring to conquer the world. Now, so far you’ve gotta be with me on how this could just as easily be about the iPhone, right? Good.

Here’s the thing about the ring though, it DOESN’T actually make it so the bearer can conquer the world at all. In fact, the only thing it does is make it so the person that made it can see exactly where whoever’s using it is; and it performs some semi entertaining parlor tricks that don’t really have too much in the way of practical application, but are pretty dazzling. In fact, the only person that it seems really gets any sort of power at all from the ring is the dude that made it.

Okay, getting pretty weird, huh? Well, here’s the final point: once you’ve had the ring in your possession, you start to feel like you need it. You feel lost without it and you realize suddenly that you’ve become so reliant on it for everything that you’re essentially nothing more than a drooling maniac with no way to do anything without it.

I lost my phone a couple of months ago and I couldn’t even call my fucking house. I was Gollum: stringy hair, bad teeth, lisp, the whole deal. Sad, sad shit. There you go. They’re the same. Steve Jobs is Sauron.

Also, and this really isn’t about the parallels between the iPhone and the one ring to rule them all anymore, but what the fuck was Sauron thinking by creating that thing in the first place? He was already powerful as shit and all the ring did was create something that someone could chop off of him thereby banishing him to a weird ethereal half-existence. It’s like, instead of it making him the ruler of middle earth, it became the one thing that could keep him from completely destroying everyone. Not a very well thought out plan.

I dunno. Just something I was thinking about. Anyway, I’d like to thank Hugo Mudie for being a great host and Pouzza Fest for being the most fun I’ve had in a long time. Listen up, bands: This is seriously the coolest fest in the coolest city in north America. When your booking agent asks you what you want to do with your spring next year, say Pouzza Fest. You’ll be so glad you did. The food is amazing, the beer is everywhere and even though they wear bras now, the sexy breakfast is in full effect.

Tabernak, y’all.